In the next scene we see Tar entering his house. Music is blaring from a downstairs room so he heads towards the noise. His house is dark and smoky with little natural light. The music is coming from the living room. The record player is playing ABBA, which Tar quickly switches off. The television is telling us of the Heysel Stadium Disaster. This tells us the year is 1985. Tar proceeds to open the curtains and turn the television off. His mother wakes up from her drunken stupor at this point as Tar begins to put the unironed clothes into a basket.
This scene tells us about Tar’s home life. The house is dark like the atmosphere. When Tar opens the curtains it suggests that he is the only ray of light in this dark family, struggling to keep things going as smoothly as possible by covering up for his mother’s failings. The music is loud and painful to listen to, reflecting his family life.
Gemma’s house is the opposite of Tar’s. It is colourful, cheerful and vibrant with plenty of natural light. She has posters on her walls and is listening to jovial 80s music. Gemma herself is wearing bright pink and blue clothes. Her father comes in, complains about the state of her room and asks her about the smell of smoke on her jacket. Gemma shakes him off with a lie and then lies again about where she is going that night.
Gemma’s room and the music playing both give an accurate depiction of Gemma’s home life. It is cheerful and happy with very few things she has to worry about. The clothes she is wearing also show that she is slightly childish.
There are some similarities between Gemma and Tar but there are a greater number of differences. They are both still children and both seem isolated from their surroundings. Gemma is isolated from the boring surroundings of Burnham-on-Sea and Tar is isolated from the dark surroundings of his home. Both are unhappy with their lives at home.
The differences between the two are easier to spot. Tar’s mother expects him to look after her and behave in the way an adult should. Gemma’s father treats Gemma like a child, which is justified as this is how she acts. Tar’s parents use him as a pawn in their relationship. His father is very violent, whereas Gemma’s father is patronising. Gemma is able to twist him round her finger. Tar is extremely vulnerable but Gemma is manipulative. She manipulates her father as she does with Tar. He has already been manipulated many times by his mother. Gemma behaves like a child by running away simply because she is bored and her parents treat her slightly unjustly. Tar has real reasons to run away as he is being manipulated by his mother and beaten by his father, both of whom are drunks.
Setting Junk in the 1980s was important for many reasons. It was in that era that heroin became fashionable. People had less knowledge of the risks involved than they do nowadays. Also, if it had been set in the present day then it would soon be outdated as things change so quickly. We can tell Junk was set in the 80s by the hairstyles, the clothes, the music and the television programmes.
In the book of Junk, Melvin Burgess used many different narrative perspectives in order to describe each character, their aims, feelings etc. This would have been very hard and confusing to do on celluloid as film adopts a different narrative convention to books. It uses other things like colours and sounds to show characters’ personalities and their development. This meant that Barry Purchese, the screenplay writer, had to choose one person’s perspective through which they could film. He chose Gemma, as she was present in almost every scene all the way through the film and managed to come off heroin and make it through to the end.
Overall, I believe the way the characters were introduced was well done. The use of colours and music to suggest things was also very intelligent. The choices to set Junk in the 1980s and use Gemma’s perspective meant that it was easier to be historically accurate and still display a lot of the original story.
